Guns, Germs, and Steel

Author: Jared Diamond W.W. Norton & Co., March 1999

Jared Diamond is a MacArthur fellow and a UCLA evolutionary biologist.
For this book Jared Diamond won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general
non-fiction. The book is an overview of the rise of civilization and the
differences in development in human societies, from the hunters and
gatherers to industrial societies. The book follows a question by a friend
from New Guinea: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo
and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our
own?" By "cargo" the man from New Guinea meant goods. Diamond's
explanation differs from those who would attribute innate superiority to
those in the more economically advanced societies – those societies that
produced steel and guns.

Diamond writes of the black people of New Guinea having
as much native intelligence as anyone else in the world. This is what I found
among other dark-skinned peoples decades ago in my journeys through the South
Pacific.

Diamond speaks of people spreading crops of wheat and barley, sheep,
goats, cows and pigs east and west from the Fertile Crescent. The
domestication of animals that could pull a plow helped produce an
abundance of food that allowed larger populations,
greater armies for conquest, labor for constructing cities and productions
of iron, steel and such that made European society greater producers and
conquerors. Before
the industrial revolution, Diamond points out, "beasts of burden were the
most powerful machines on the planet." The mule, horse and ox were available
to the Europeans and not to the people of New Guinea. "The only muscle power in
New Guinea was human muscle power."

Diamond believes that Europeans have benefited more than have the
people of New Guinea from geography. He describes the creation of immunities
among those living close to animals in Europe. And he writes of their
immunities, guns and steel giving them an advantage in dominating others
around the globe.